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Starbucks vs the used bookstore
Dean Wesley Smith, whose blog I love, has a post about ebook prices, in which he reposts a comment about how low ebook prices are bad; discerning customers believe anything priced at $.99 is crap, and besides, authors should be willing to think of their short-story ebooks like a Starbucks coffee: $5 gets you 15 minutes of entertainment. (Starbucks has physical substance, but the ebook can be read again, and in some cases, loaned out; it pretty much balances.)
While I can understand their points, I disagree with some of their conclusions because I think they're missing some of the factors involved in ebook purchases. I made a comment which was long enough (and borderline-ranty enough) that I'm reposting it here:
I have a reader's perspective, not a writer's. While I want the writers I enjoy to make enough money to keep writing, I am also sharply aware that no writer anywhere--no small pool of writers anywhere--is going to keep up with my reading rate, so I need to ration my book purchases.
I'll buy Starbucks-priced ebooks, a few bucks for 15 minutes of reading pleasure... occasionally. I have to already believe I'll like it, which means not wasting that money on an author I haven't read before. (While I will buy coffee or a sandwich from a place I haven't bought from before, if it turns out bad, I won't buy anything from that place again. In the case of ebooks, this means boycotting a publisher or subgenre, and certainly not buying a second book by that author.) I have a cap on fiction: Baen charges $6 for ebooks, so when I see a book that costs more than that, I ask myself, "would I enjoy this more than one of the Baen books I haven't purchased yet?" So far, the answer is always no. I don't buy fiction ebooks that cost more than $6. (Nonfic, my current highest cost is $30. I don't have a price cap for nonfic.)
I am not happy with the movement to shift ebook prices upward, because I remember being poor. I bought a lot of three-for-a-dollar used books. There are no three-per-dollar ebooks; Amazon's pricing setup has killed that market. The drive away from $1-$3 ebooks is something I watch carefully.
I wonder about the future of literary culture... my daughters can't legally buy ebooks, because they can't legally agree to the contracts necessary to have accounts at ebook stores. So they read freebies, and whatever I hand them that fits their tastes. (They read fanfic. I've attempted to buy them ebooks; the results weren't promising and I stopped.) They are avid readers... but they're not learning the habits that will set them up to be avid *buyers* when they have money of their own. If the ebook market stabilizes at "Freebie - all levels of quality (because there will always be freebies of random quality); $1 - self-indulgent crap and first-draft short stories; $3 - a few decent shorts and promo novels, but mostly more crap; $5 and up - good stories"... they'll never make the jump from freebies to paid ebooks. They'll look at the paid market, buy one or two things, get burned by a novel that looked good but was either a bad story, or badly formatted, or just not to their tastes, and decide that paying for books is too risky.
There is an *endless* supply of free content to read. Some of it is *excellent* content. While I can respect authors who decide that the $1 customer is not of interest to them, I hope that enough decide that those customers *are* their demographic of choice, that the future of ebooks doesn't have a large schism between "those who pay for content" and "those who read promo freebies, fanfic, public domain & creative commons works and disdain even looking at anything with a price tag."
The $1-$3 ebook niche is the market for the used-bookstore customer. Is the college student on a budget. Those are longtime avid readers who usually didn't pay royalties... now there's a way to get them to pay directly to the authors. They're willing to wade through piles of books they're not interested in, of random quality levels, to find what they like. But if there's nothing in their price range, they'll find freebies to read, or shift to other media.
Ebooks aren't just competing with print books; they're competing with Tumblr. I don't want indie authors to fall into the trap the big publishing houses are building for themselves, believing they are in the "book" industry instead of the "entertainment and information" industry.
While I can understand their points, I disagree with some of their conclusions because I think they're missing some of the factors involved in ebook purchases. I made a comment which was long enough (and borderline-ranty enough) that I'm reposting it here:
I have a reader's perspective, not a writer's. While I want the writers I enjoy to make enough money to keep writing, I am also sharply aware that no writer anywhere--no small pool of writers anywhere--is going to keep up with my reading rate, so I need to ration my book purchases.
I'll buy Starbucks-priced ebooks, a few bucks for 15 minutes of reading pleasure... occasionally. I have to already believe I'll like it, which means not wasting that money on an author I haven't read before. (While I will buy coffee or a sandwich from a place I haven't bought from before, if it turns out bad, I won't buy anything from that place again. In the case of ebooks, this means boycotting a publisher or subgenre, and certainly not buying a second book by that author.) I have a cap on fiction: Baen charges $6 for ebooks, so when I see a book that costs more than that, I ask myself, "would I enjoy this more than one of the Baen books I haven't purchased yet?" So far, the answer is always no. I don't buy fiction ebooks that cost more than $6. (Nonfic, my current highest cost is $30. I don't have a price cap for nonfic.)
I am not happy with the movement to shift ebook prices upward, because I remember being poor. I bought a lot of three-for-a-dollar used books. There are no three-per-dollar ebooks; Amazon's pricing setup has killed that market. The drive away from $1-$3 ebooks is something I watch carefully.
I wonder about the future of literary culture... my daughters can't legally buy ebooks, because they can't legally agree to the contracts necessary to have accounts at ebook stores. So they read freebies, and whatever I hand them that fits their tastes. (They read fanfic. I've attempted to buy them ebooks; the results weren't promising and I stopped.) They are avid readers... but they're not learning the habits that will set them up to be avid *buyers* when they have money of their own. If the ebook market stabilizes at "Freebie - all levels of quality (because there will always be freebies of random quality); $1 - self-indulgent crap and first-draft short stories; $3 - a few decent shorts and promo novels, but mostly more crap; $5 and up - good stories"... they'll never make the jump from freebies to paid ebooks. They'll look at the paid market, buy one or two things, get burned by a novel that looked good but was either a bad story, or badly formatted, or just not to their tastes, and decide that paying for books is too risky.
There is an *endless* supply of free content to read. Some of it is *excellent* content. While I can respect authors who decide that the $1 customer is not of interest to them, I hope that enough decide that those customers *are* their demographic of choice, that the future of ebooks doesn't have a large schism between "those who pay for content" and "those who read promo freebies, fanfic, public domain & creative commons works and disdain even looking at anything with a price tag."
The $1-$3 ebook niche is the market for the used-bookstore customer. Is the college student on a budget. Those are longtime avid readers who usually didn't pay royalties... now there's a way to get them to pay directly to the authors. They're willing to wade through piles of books they're not interested in, of random quality levels, to find what they like. But if there's nothing in their price range, they'll find freebies to read, or shift to other media.
Ebooks aren't just competing with print books; they're competing with Tumblr. I don't want indie authors to fall into the trap the big publishing houses are building for themselves, believing they are in the "book" industry instead of the "entertainment and information" industry.